


Return To Sender

by HazardousWaste



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Humor, Multi, Mutual Pining, Yearning, lots of yearning, marriage law
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:21:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24420490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazardousWaste/pseuds/HazardousWaste
Summary: A story about lies, responsibilities, redemption, love and admitting it if you've messed up. And undelivered letters.Alternatively, a tale of hope as told through correspondences of the written type.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fan fiction using characters J K Rowling's amazing Harry Potter series. These are not my characters, I'm just grateful that they exist. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

** August 2008, Somewhere in Greece.  **

Hermione placed the envelope down on her kitchen counter and leaned her back against the smooth granite. She touched her left hand with her right hand and turned the wedding ring back and forth. Her ring was warm. Much like the calm sea below her home, Hermione’s wedding band exerted a strange presence over her that ebbed like a low tide. Usually, she was able to send that constant invisible pull to the back of her mind. Ever since she had left England, she was constantly pulled towards...something. Maybe it was for adventure. Maybe it was to get her to regain her zest for life. Maybe it was to discover a new purpose. Right now, it was the only sensation she could feel. She was thinking of _him_. Her ring thrummed vivaciously. As if to remind her to gather her bearings and calm down. It felt like a warm hand was steadying her.

Hermione's placid exterior could not cover her anticipation. She hadn't even opened the envelope yet and her nerves were fried. She was giddy with excitement yet filled with dread. There was exactly one hour before she needed to give the envelope back to Ceres, the owl currently perched on her kitchen window. Otherwise, everything would go to Hell. Her secret would be exposed. She could be Obliviated and banned from the Wizarding World by the Ministry for defying and outsmarting the very people who protected the supposed smartest and bravest of the lot. Or be sent to Azkaban for high treason. Or worse, face _him_.

Her pulse was hammering in her ears. She closed her eyes and regained her composure. Breathed in and out. In and out. The refreshing afternoon wind hugged her brown skin and summer dress. She opened her chocolate-brown eyes. She was in trouble. She had been in trouble for ages. But today, it felt unbearable. She was positively doomed and it was no one else's fault but hers. She was in love. With her husband.

The trouble?

She was dead. Deceased. Defunct. Technically, Missing-Presumed-Dead.

Eh. Semantics.

When she deserted her husband in 2005, Hermione did not have the foresight to account for a Malfoy-shaped boomerang flinging her plans into a state of disarray. Not in her wildest dreams, did she think that she would be a ~~dead~~ missing-presumed-dead woman in love with her very-much-alive-husband who lived several countries away from her. Make no mistake, Hermione had wanted to appear dead in the eyes of the world. She just didn’t want to be a dead woman in love. Not even Shakespeare could make a heroine this tragic.

Hermione opened her eyes and carefully took her wand in her right hand, and the letter in her left hand. Her plain gold wedding band shined delicately as she smoothed the envelope and tenderly sliced the seal from the envelope below. _Easy, Hermione. Careful does it_ , her father always said. She opened the letter and eagerly scanned it.

Letter #534 August 31, 2008

_Granger,_

_You'll be pleased to know that I'm building an amusement park. Wiltshire could use some perkiness. There is a parcel of land a bit farther away into the forest that can house a sizable park. It'll be a magical amusement park and it'll be open to the whole of Wizarding World. I've already convinced Potter and Weasley to be my test dummies for the magical rollercoasters. Who would have thought it would come to this? Me, inviting your best friends to help me build an amusement park. Maybe they're helping me because they pity me. A 28-year-old widower. Or maybe they've come to enjoy my particular brand of (mostly harmless) sharp witted quips. They're getting better at dishing them back at me. Which is really not to be borne. I'm a widower, after all._

_I'm back from my trip overseas. Refer to Letter #533. You can't. You don't have it. I went to the United States of America on a research trip, paid for by the Ministry, and did a little bit of sight-seeing. Why would I mention a work-sponsored trip when I have millions of galleons collecting dust in my vaults?, you may ask. That, Granger, is because if I go on official business, I get a license to use magic with way fewer restrictions._

_Lucky that I did, because I went to Disneyland and finished up the trip within 2 hours. I Apparated in front of the line to every ride, confused a few Muggles, tried their delightful dessert-twigs called "churros" and left in a rather jolly mood. Granted, I could replicate the same thrill of those rollercoasters with a standard broom and a clear sky. But there's something deliriously fun about leaving your fate in the hands of a machine as you're sitting with strangers and being thrashed up and down for a full five minutes. Muggles spend the whole day roaming about and eating and clicking photographs with silly mouse figures and people in hats and wigs and colorful costumes at Disney-Land. Can you believe that? What's so entrancing about looking at costumed bears who eat honey, pirates and princesses and pointing at them? Utterly barmy to me. They know how to have fun though. I suppose Wizards and Muggles chase thrills alike._

_I want to spend a whole day at Disneyland with you. I would not mind taking silly pictures of you, walking next to you, waiting in lines, and sharing a churro with you for nine hours straight. I wouldn't mind oogling at you as you oogled at the sights before you. I daresay I wouldn't mind it all. It would be the seventeenth happiest place on Earth for me. You'll have to reply if you want to know the first sixteen happiest places on Earth on my list._

_A bloke proposed to his boyfriend in front of a blue and white castle. A flock of tourists stopped me in my tracks and asked to take a photograph with their group while I was on my fourth churro. And who am I to deny my adoring fans? They were obviously struck by my patrician features. The women wouldn't stop fighting over who got to stand around me, and as flattered as I was, one of them took it too far by trying to squeeze my perfectly sculpted left buttock. I was affronted, Granger. I'm a taken man, after all. It's a tragedy, really. My own wife didn't get the chance to experience a modern marvel. And now she's dead. Missing-presumed-dead, technically._

_What is the proper mourning interval for one's spouse? You can only mourn what you lose. If that is mourning, then I mourn for my arse, destined to remain un-grabbed. Until you come home. I cannot mourn you. I have not lost you, you see. I know where you are. In my heart._

_I'm disgusted. I fear that was too sappy. Excuse the paragraph above. However, I don’t think of what I write before I write to you, Granger. It’s more of a stream of consciousness, really. And if I cannot share my deepest, most embarrassing thoughts with my wife, then I shouldn’t have married her. Let that be a lesson to you, Granger. Don’t marry a bloke that won’t listen to your deepest thoughts. I have it on good authority that your current husband is quite an avid listener. Give him a chance, won’t you? Come home._

_As has become tradition, the following is where I document my attempts at pleading you to return: (See, Granger, what a fool I've become. Insanity and doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome, and all that tripe. That genius physician Muggle chap did have a funky little mustache, didn't he? Maybe I'll grow a mustache like him until you come home. Maybe you’ll let me tickle your bum with it.)_

_This is my 534th attempt at locating you and begging you to come home to me, Granger. I'll write everyday. Ad infinitum, if I have to. Ceres will fly daily if I ask that of her. I think she wants to meet you too. She understands my purpose with these letters. That’s probably why Ceres does her best to find you but each time, she comes home with my unopened letters. Owls are such clever beasts. Ceres, in particular, is a lovely Owl for putting up with my demands. I'll even write to you as a ghost and have my ghost bird fly around daily. Even that genocidal maniac found the Americas thinking it was India. If he can find a new continent, then surely I can find you. That’s a threat, Granger._

_I'll fill this planet with letters to the brim, if I have to. With the hope that maybe these letters will one day wind up wherever you are and convince you to give us a chance. I'd rather have you beside me. I'd rather speak to you of my utter devotion to you than write to you. I'm a bard, Granger. Once upon a time, I was a sniveling coward and today, I'm a bard. In love. A bard in love willing to wax poetic, for you. I'm all the happier for being in love with you. Even if I'm without you._

_Yours,_

_D. M._

_P.S. Don’t worry. Before you scrunch your nose in anger and put out a warrant for my arrest on account of abusing my Owl, Ceres is well taken care of. She only flies if she wants to. She chooses to make these silly trips. I told you, Ceres is eager to see you._

Sighing, Hermione took a sip of her warm tea and placed her teacup down on its coaster. She played with her wedding band as she imagined the ridiculous scenarios in his letter, and processed the earnest promises Draco Malfoy had written to her.

"Albert Einstein was a Physicist not a physician. Furthermore, he did not say that quote. Rita Mae Brown deserves credit for it," Hermione muttered to herself. 

Hermione stood up straight, left her kitchen counter and went to the bedroom where she kept her pensieve. She opened the drawer to her night table and grabbed a white marble resting on its matching marble box. She placed the box on her night stand, sat on the side of her bed, and turned on the tiny desk lamp. She placed the marble on the table and transformed into a small marble bowl which was no bigger than a salad bowl.

Tapping her wand twice on the intricate Greek pattern lining the outside of the pensieve, she recited her password, "Grumpy swamps, gurgle snotwarts, keep your hands off my lemon-tarts."

Her pensieve began to swirl in a haze, and Hermione looked down soberly at the tiny ribbons dancing in the whirlpool. She tapped her wand to her left temple and pulled her latest memory. Gently, she guided the golden, gossamer thread to the whirlpool in her pensieve and watched as it joined the rest of the spooling tendrils. Molding into the haze, her most recent deposit lost its shiny golden hue in exchange for a cloudy grey hue.

Grey like his eyes. Grey like heartbreak. 

These delicate wisps of memory contained each and every single letter that she had ever read from him. Her husband. All five-hundred thirty four letters. What had started as an amusing game had turned into a reservoir of anguish. Hermione didn't realize that her curiosity would lead her to her own private version of Hell. Maybe her heart would stop clenching when she thought of him. Exposure therapy is typically supposed to decrease one's fear over time, but all Hermione learned was that repeatedly thinking of him only made her heart catch in a vise-grip. Hermione transformed the pensieve into an unassuming marble again, and carefully placed it back into its box. She could feel the tears gathering and sniffled as she stood up. Next, she walked across her room, entered her study, and sat at her desk.

She grabbed her quill and parchment and started to write out her reply.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione goes through her system, albeit unwillingly.

Re: Letter #534 

_Malfoy,_

_I expressly dislike to be tickled. My bum is off-limits to your mustache. Furthermore, Albert Einstein_ was a _physi cist not a physician. A physician is a Muggle Healer. Even further, the correct quote is ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.’ Rita Mae Brown deserves credit for it. Don’t call me a swot. You’ve just now been re-educated. Except not really. You won't receive this reply._

_An amusement park? At Malfoy Manor? I know your premises are huge but big enough to contain an amusement park... Color me surprised. Is your mother aware of it? I'd pay good money to see Narcissa Malfoy ride a rollercoaster at an egregious speed. Rebranding Malfoy Manor as a funhouse is a step in the right direction. Maybe you could even invite that flock of tourists at your official launch._

_As a past observer of your physical...traits... I'm not surprised you were approached by random hordes of women. Even at the Ministry when we worked together, it was obvious you were the center of attention, regardless of whether you wanted it like that or not. The world is safe yet, if you're bragging about a booty that's been kept in shape this long. At the time, I didn't know if I was jealous or annoyed at your uncanny ability to command attention so easily. Now, I know that I was mesmerized by you. I was among the masses that you controlled with a simple swagger and a piercing gaze. Now, I know I am no different than that horde of tourists. I was just too stubborn to admit it._

_Ever considered hiring a sculptor to memorialize your bum? You could start your own gallery. Title: The Unsqueezed Arse. It's a heavy burden to bear. As they say, heavy is the arse that wears the crown. Maybe I'll send you a sculpture of my hands so that your marble butt can find some reprieve. Your flesh, I fear, may never find the hands that it seeks._

_I wish I could tell you where I am. Harry and Ron know where I am. They just know not to tell you that I'm alive. I wish you'd just believe it and move on. When I left England, I had no remorse. But now, I'm sorry I didn't tell you. You ought to have known what I was going to do. It was unfair to you. I shouldn't have ever left you. How was I to know that you were so capable of depth? Of love? Of remorse? Of fun? I wish I had been more empathic about my forgiveness to you. You no longer need to prove yourself worthy of anyone, let alone me. You're bearing the brunt of my decision. It's getting more and more difficult to restrain myself. I'm tempted to return to England and profess my love for you. I'm even willing to deal with the fallout that is bound to happen._

_Yours,_

_H. G-M._

Hermione folded her response after the ink dried, and opened the bottom drawer of her study. She had a system. Her regular desk drawer had been charmed with an Undetectable Extension Charm, much like her bag. She had fit a never-ending filing cabinet within it that full of dividers and tabs. She enjoyed colorful Muggle stationary items. It added a little color to her solemn, lonely life. Hermione dropped her response into the 534th folder and gently closed the drawer. She had responded 534 times to Draco Malfoy's letters. She just never Owled them back. If she did, it would negate the whole convince-the-world-I’ve-disappeared-never-to-be-found shtick.

Hermione headed back to her cozy kitchen and saw that she still had twenty minutes remaining before Ceres had to return with Malfoy's resealed letter. She enjoyed being with Ceres. The bright red and pink hues from the sunset entered her kitchen and warmed her house. A summer breeze entered her window and reminded her just how lovely this gorgeous Greek town was. Her humble abode was perched on the side of a hill that was overlooking the ocean. She walked to the open window and stared out into the calm blue-green sea. Admiring the bay and the colorful house sturdily stuccoed to the hill below her, she looked down to see people walking up the winding road and kids playing earnestly.

This was a worthy life. She could easily live here for the rest of her life. She was content. **No.** She used to be content. She is no longer content. Once upon a time, she was too proud to admit her discontent and restlessness.

Hermione folded Malfoy’s letter, gently. She placed it in the envelope the way it came, magically glued the wax seal back and pressed its edges to make sure the seal looked untampered. She cast a robust _Disinfecto miniscule_ to completely erase her magical fingerprints and placed the letter on the kitchen counter. She had a system. She was practically a master of opening her unwitting husband's letters, greedily reading the contents of said letters and returning them to his owl to be taken back, as if they had never been opened.

The regal-looking owl finished eating her treat and looked up at Hermione with questioning eyes, as if to ask Hermione if she really wanted to do this again.

"Here, Ceres. Fly safe," Hermione gently beckoned. The jet black owl gently hooted twice before nudging Hermione's palm adieu, taking the envelope and flying away. Hermione watched as Ceres gracefully flew over the evening Mediterranean sea. 

Ever since her escape to Australia three years ago, Ceres had been helping Hermione fool her own husband. When Ceres had first appeared with Malfoy's letter in Perth, Australia, Hermione couldn't resist reading what was inside. Her brilliant mind soon came up with a plan to allow her to be nosy _and_ appear dead like she wanted.

From years of research and stored knowledge of all things Wizarding, Hermione remembered reading about the practical applications of Owling. The Shadownecked Forest Owl was among the fastest and most agile breeds. They were able to deliver mail about six to seven percent faster than their regular counterparts. If an average barn owl returned undelivered mail exactly 24 hours after its departure, then a Shadownecked Forest Owl like Ceres would only need roughly 23 hours, including breaks during the journey. It was a known rule in the Wizarding World that all owls must return home within 24 hours if the mail is addressed to a dead recipient, no matter the distance. Thus, if Ceres didn't return with undelivered mail within that time frame, Malfoy would know that Ceres had found Hermione. 

Hermione had a slight moment of regret. These pangs of regrets grew stronger each time each time Ceres flew away. She was approaching her tipping point. She could have easily sent her reply instead. She could have finally put an end to her misery and admitted to Draco Malfoy that she, too, wished to be with him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brand new writer here, barely learning to use AO3. I'm really sorry for the repeated edits I've done to fix my grammatical errors. I will definitely have to be more mindful of reading my work before posting it. 
> 
> Bear with me, and thank you for reading this story!!

**Author's Note:**

> Credit goes to Rita Mae Brown for her quote on insanity.  
> Disneyland for their motto "The Happiest Place on Earth"  
> The creator of my favorite fanfic trope: Marriage Law
> 
> This work is an amalgamation of many influences. Off the top of my head:  
> 1\. Nelpher's How Soon Is Now? (letter format, obviously)  
> 2\. Boo_82's The Inspection on Elfish Labour Conditions (the tenderness. And the angst!!) Everything about this story is 10s across the boards.  
> 3\. Somandalicious for their dramatic, snarky and fun Draco.  
> 4\. Floorcoaster and Namelessamelie for their beautiful stories. I love their writing style.  
> 5\. And all of the fanfics I've read before that have jumbled into my head and given me this idea.  
> If you catch something that needs to credited, please let me know ASAP so I can give credit.


End file.
